This year Queer Rebels Fest teams up with Foglifter Journal for 2 nights of subversive performance featuring a different cast each night! Join us in celebrating queer & transgender artists of color AND our stories of resistance.

Queer Rebels returns with timely political work (Orlando, Black Lives Matter); in Trump times, we transgress, we cross, we border, we resist, we deviate! Whitewashing, both historical and present, changes Puerto Rico’s culture. A 2 Spirit infomercial provides tongue-in-cheek survival strategies. Trouble the Water asks, in a climate of police brutality and the enduring legacies of slavery, is there a place where Black people can breathe on earth? Post-Orlando, Queer Historical Mixtape reminds us that we can mend our broken places.

Queer Rebels’ Vision: Founded in late 2008 by artists KB Boyce and Celeste Chan, Queer Rebels showcases queer/trans artists of color, connects generations, and honors our histories with art for the future.

Transgressors

Queer Rebels return with “Transgressors,” a raised fist of QTPOC experimentations with a mission to transgress, to cross, to border, to aggress and to deviate.

A mother and daughter find strength in global protests against injustice (FU377, Neelu Bhuman). Whitewashing, both historical and present, changes Puerto Rico’s culture (CLAVADO, Cristobal Guerra). A 2 Spirit infomercial provides tongue-in-cheek survival strategies (2 Spirit Introductory Special $19.99, Thirza Cuthand). A dead starlet reveals her memorial reel (Reveal, Nao Bustamante); these Queens will rise again (Queen Down, West Vargina (Heather María Ács) & Sequinette Jaynesfield). There is only one witness to death (Warning Shot: The Killing of James Wakasa, Tina Takemoto). An artist meditates on blackness, diasporic longing, and the natural world (Hearing in the Dark, Naima Lowe). Post-Orlando, we rise in the spirit of Sylvia Rivera with rage, love, and GAY POWER (Queer Historical Mixtape, Celeste Chan and Irina Contreras).

– Curated by Queer Rebels

FU377, Neelu Bhuman

FU377

Neelu Bhuman2014, UK, video, color, sound, 5 min.

This stop-motion animation juxtaposes a young lesbian’s heartbreak over the recent revival of Indian Penal Code section 377, which is often cited in official condemnation and violation of queer Indians’ rights. The romantically spurned daughter wants to close herself off to the world, renouncing her queerness and hiding in fear. Her mother, through a collage of news coverage and interviews, helps her daughter find strength in the world’s anger; together at last they join the protests and take up the daughter’s dignity in their own hands, with the support of a global community.

Queer Historical Mixtape – Part 1

Irina Contreras2016, USA, video, color, sound, 18 min. NY Premiere

CLAVADO

Cristobal Guerra2015, USA, video, color, sound, 3 min. NY Premiere

A piece featuring some poetry I wrote last year and visuals from my island Puerto Rico. “Clave” is an african beat that gave birth to most caribbean rhythms and it’s at the background of the whole piece, giving it some pace and reference. The piece was based on a conversation I was having with my young niece about our african heritage and they way it’s erased in our culture. – Cristobal Guerra

2 Spirit Introductory Special $19.99

Thirza Cuthand2015, Canada, video, color, sound, 5 min. NY Premiere

Don’t worry if you are just coming out as a 2 Spirited person, we have just the introductory special for you!

Reveal

Nao Bustamante 2014, USA, video, color, sound, 11 min.

This is a close to completed version of Reveal. It’s for the filmformance Silver & Gold. It plays after Maria drinks poison and has a prolonged and ridiculous death scene. It functions as a sort of dead actress memorial reel. This film is also meant to be performed with live sound. Although it is a work-in-progress, it has already been performed at USC Visions and Voices series, Los Angeles and the Whitney in NYC.

Queen Down

The Glorious Queens of Xxxmas have been thrown out on the curb! Who will save them?

Warning Shot: The Killing of James Wakasa

Tina Takemoto2015, USA, video, color, sound, 12 min. NY Premiere

One death. Three versions of the crime. James Wakasa, a 63-year-old Japanese American bachelor, was shot to death by military police at Topaz concentration camp during World War II. Was it justifiable homicide, an accidental fatality, or second-degree murder? The press said he was trying to escape, the shooter claimed it was a warning shot, the case file suggests he was killed while walking a dog. This experimental film essay uses the “Rashomon effect” to juxtapose the conflicting accounts detailing the circumstances and cause of Wakasa’s untimely death.

Hearing in the Dark

Naima Lowe2017, USA, video, color, sound, 2 min. World Premiere

A meditation on blackness, diasporic longing, and the natural world.

Queer Historical Mixtape – Part 2

Celeste Chan2016, USA, video, color, sound, 19 min. NY Premiere

Post-Orlando, we rise in rage, love, and GAY POWER in the spirit of Sylvia Rivera

ANCIENT FUTURE: From a queer apocalyptic land, to a 70 year-old bodybuilder, to a young girl fleeing Iran at night, what does our collective future/freedom look like? ANCIENT FUTURE is irreverent, rejecting exotification – and paying homage to the wisdom of our ancestors and homelands. ANCIENT FUTURE – we claim it queer with these cosmic creations.

One magical full moon night, Tara and her mother must flee Iran through the desert, in search of freedom, and with hope for a more liberated life but first, they must let go, unite and let the knowledge of their ancestors guide them.

This experimental animation introduces the audience to two queer characters struggling with the aftermath of apocalyptic disaster. What does ‘the end of the world’ really mean? How might we radically ‘queer’ our relationship to the earth in the face of human-caused destruction?

Sarah Sass Biscarra-Dilley, Anna Luisa Petrisko, Grace Rosario Perkins, and Adee Roberson. Black Salt embodies cultural and contemporary narratives. The work is cultural, but not “cultural” in the anthropological sense of the word, as cultural art is often seen through a Western lens. Black Salt calls on ancestral and embodied knowledge with the intention of creating a vibrant future in which complex identities can coexist. Originally a performance component, “We Come from Earth, We Come from Space” features footage from six hours of tape filmed on location throughout the Southwest and the homesites of one member. Black Salt Collective’s upcoming web based project will use non-linear and experimental narratives to create a working archive exploring themes such as creation stories, language, memory, and ritual. Music by Mother Popcorn and Jeepneys.

Jeepneys and Low Leaf, cosmic parrot sisters of the infinince, forever frolicking upon the nebular fields of the many dimensions we inhabit, intersect heartminds and find a universe of creatures. Together they dance joyfully between the folds of space and time. Low Leaf, an eternally expansive being, Earth’s beloved fairy swung from a crescent moon, beacon of divine ancestoric light force! As she climbs the palm tree of divine destiny she meets Jeepneys on the other side. Jeepneys, the alien bird mestiza, whose laughter creates stars across a void. Eyeing each other through the pyramid of palms, they see that they have been together since before the beginning of time. WE DO NoT PLACE ANY HIERARCHY TO TIME NOR SPACE NOR FLESH. OUR GARDENS LIVE ON METEORS AND MOONS. WE GIVE BIRTH TO UNIVERSES AND THEY GIVE BIRTH TO US.

Queer Rebels presents SPIRIT: Queer Asian, Arab, and Pacific Islander Artivism. A rainbow of rabble-rousers. From the Arab Spring to Angel Island to Third World Liberation, these untold queer stories spring to life. Come see fresh performance and film/video from Asian, Arab, and Pacific Islanders artivists! Facebook invite

“a new and ripe realm for building power, community, and visibility” – Bitch Magazine

Bellows is a queer bay-area-native drag performance duo, featuring songwriter, Kyle Casey Chu on vocals, and Rachel Waterhouse on keys. Their murder ballad sound has been likened to that
of Rufus Wainwright, Elton John and the late Freddie Mercury. They are committed to harping on their exes, publicly shaming gaycist queens and airing out only their moistest, most stinkiest laundry.

Elena Rose, a Filipina-Ashkenazic mixed-class trans dyke mestiza, is a writer, religion scholar, medic, and survivor from rural Oregon. Dedicated to the projects of radical love, community building, and media justice, she writes online as “little light” at http://takingsteps.blogspot.com. She co-curates and headlines the five-years-running National Queer Arts Festival production, Girl Talk: A Cis and Trans Woman Dialogue. Her writing has found its way everywhere from law school classrooms and academic conferences to bathroom mirrors and protest marches. Rose currently resides in northern California, where she studies, organizes, and stays busy being in good stories; she carries a pen, her ancestors, and the mismatched ID of a citizen of the borderlands with her at all times.

Genevieve Erin O’Brien is a Vietnamese/Irish/American artist, culinary adventurer, community organizer, popular educator, incidental academic and occasional nanny to artists, activists, and academics alike. She holds an MFA in Studio Art/Performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. O’Brien was in Vietnam as a Fulbright Fellow in 2009 and 2010. O’Brien uses performance, video and installation to explore notions of “home” and “homeland”. As a mixed race child of Vietnamese immigrant mother and an Irish-American father, she investigates issues such as war and memory, transnational identity and belonging, and multiple identities and its attendant baggage. Using food, humor, narrative and conceptual structures, she develops work that is invested in collective healing from trauma, whether personal or inherited to further social justice and cultural understanding. Her conceptual and durational performances, as well as installations and videos have been presented at galleries and public venues in numerous cities including Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and across the US in Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington DC. Her current performance series GEO Home and GEO work, explore the relationships we have to home and labor through food.

Heaven Mousalem is a dancer and performing artist trained in Modern Arabic Stage Style™ by the legendary Shabnam of Oakland, CA. She performs weekly throughout the Bay Area and is the Executive Director of Ooh La La Bellydance and Shabnam Dance Company. Known for her dynamic movements, flexibility, and charisma, she hopes to bring a greater appreciation of this often misunderstood art form to her audience. Shimmy on! http://www.heavenbellydancer.com

Maryam Farnaz Rostami is a San Francisco-based contemporary performance artist, director, and writer originally from Texas. She is the child of model minorities. She uses lipsync, movement,narrative, dance and an exaggerated high femme medium to play, destroy and create. Maryam is a co-founder of the performance experiment Nicole Kidman is Fucking Gorgeous, which played winter 2013 at CounterPULSE, and her last evening length piece, PERSIAN LOOKING, played at CounterPULSE in the summer of 2012. She has played at ZSpace, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the De Young Museum, The Garage, The Stud, the Dana Street Theater, La Pena Theater, Root Division Gallery and Catherine Clarke Gallery. maryamrostami.com

KB Boyce is a Two-Spirit musician whose adventures have brought hir from teenage punk band appearances at CBGBs in NY, to B-grade horror movies in LA, and on to solo Drag King blues performance as TuffNStuff in San Francisco. S/he pays homage to African-American and Indigenous legacies of resistance through art. Boyce is the Co-Founder of Queer Rebels, a queer people of color arts company that connects generations – and honors our queer legacies with art for the future. www.queerrebels.com

Celeste Chan creates work born from Queer Diaspora through wit, words, and film. A Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA) literary fellow, her writing is published in As/us literary journal and Feminist Wire. Her films have screened at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival, MIX NYC, Frameline, and National Queer Arts Festival, among others. She’s honored to be the Co-Founder of Queer Rebels (a queer of color arts company), with her partner, KB Boyce. For more info: www.celestechan.com and www.facebook.com/QRProductions

Ryka Aoki has been honored by the California State Senate for “extraordinary commitment to free speech and artistic expression, as well as the visibility and well-being of Transgender people.” Her chapbook Sometimes Too Hot the Eye of Heaven Shines, won RADAR Productions’ 2010 Eli Coppola Award. Her collection, Seasonal Velocities was a finalist for a 2013 Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Nonfiction. Her novel, He Mele a Hilo (Topside Signature Press) is being released as you read this. Ryka also appears in Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation (Seal Press), Transfeminist Perspectives (Temple University), and The Collection (Topside Press). She is a professor of English at Santa Monica College and coordinates the Queer Studies program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. www.rykaryka.com

Celeste Chan is an Asian artivist and queer femme (you read that right). Her writing can be found in As/us literary journal and Feminist Wire. Her films have screened at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival, MIX NYC, Frameline, Digital Desperados, and National Queer Arts Festival, among others. She’s honored to be the Co-Founder of Queer Rebels (a queer of color arts company), with her partner, KB Boyce. You can catch her new work in 2014 at CAAMFest (formerly known as SF Intl Asian American Film Festival), Queer Women of Color Film Festival, the San Francisco Public Library and beyond! For more info: www.celestechan.com and www.facebook.com/QRProductions

Devyn Manibo is a full time diva and East Coast based interdisciplinary artist working primarily in multi-media installation with a basis in diasporic affect, kinship, and queer narratives of home and trauma through a postcolonial/neocolonial lens. She creates and collaborates as a means of cultivating space for resistance, survival, and love for and by her communities. She believes in femme supremacy, and has a love for extravagance and the illusion of lavish. She can usually be found race raging, shade bending, and averting your settler colonialist gaze with a resting glare of displeasure.

Gein Wong is an interdisciplinary director, playwright, spoken word poet, composer and video artist. Her works focus on obvious things like gender, class and race….as well as things a little less obvious, like gender, class and race. She is a 2012-13 Canadian Stage RBC BASH Director in Residence, a 2013 Harbourfront Centre HATCH Resident Artist, a two-time Philadelphia Asian Arts Initiative Resident Artist and is collaborating on a New York HERE Arts Centre Residency. She was shortlisted for the Ontario KM Hunter Theatre Awards in Theatre (2010) and Literature (2013). Her art have been shown and performed across Canada, in the United Kingdom, the Caribbean, East Asia and the United States. She is published in the Playwrights Canada Press Anthology Refractions Solo and is a featured artist in Diaspora Dialogues’ 5th Anniversary Commemorative Book. Gein is a New York Kundiman Poetry fellow and is featured on the Dig Your Roots Canadian Spoken Word CD. She has released two CDs Thousand Mile Voice and Burning Money for You which are a warm and distinctive blend of East Asian acoustic instruments and electronic brushed beats. She is classically trained in piano and french horn and has trained with the erhu (Chinese violin) virtuoso Shao Lin. Gein is the Artistic Director of Eventual Ashes, the Asian Arts Freedom School and a co-owner of the Gladday Bookshop. http://www.geinwong.com

Jeepneys is the musical and performance alias of Anna Luisa Petrisko, who uses science fiction in her work to broaden our imagination across literal and figurative borders and perform postcolonial critique. Jeepneys is named after the colorful and iconic public transportation vehicles that populate the Philippine islands, originating from discarded U.S. WWII army jeeps. In the spirit of that reinvention, Jeepneys uses earthly materials to create otherworldly sounds and art, manifesting “electro Pinayism waves” that travel beyond our known borders. She is constantly traveling through space, seeking the wisdom of the cosmos, and exploring the infinite possibilities to heal through art and music.

Jeepneys has exhibited at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) and MOMA PS1, and was one of the artists commissioned to perform for The Getty’s Pacific Standard Time Presents: LA Modern Architecture. She has toured the United States and Europe as a solo performer (Jeepneys) several times. She is also one half of the performance and installation duet Mother Popcorn, along with artist Adee Roberson, and a member of an all women of color artist group, Black Salt Collective. She resides in Val Verde, CA, where she spends much of her time star-gazing and listening to the songs of the coyotes and owls.

Kirthi Nath makes films that seem spun from dreams. As an award-winning independent filmmaker, Kirthi has established a body of creative work that fluidly straddles genres, occupying a fertile landscape of cultural poetics, experimentalism, documentary and hybrid narrative. Tactile and dreamlike, her work explores storytelling, desire, spirituality, cultural identities and moments of being. Current projects include a series of multimedia projects about magical messages, creative presence and modern day mindfulness. In addition to her own artistic work, Kirthi is the creative director and lead filmmaker at Cinemagical Media, a media production company that collaborates with social entrepreneurs, values based companies and nonprofits to create films and movements for our evolving culture. www.cinemagicalmedia.com

Laura Hyunjhee Kim is an interdisciplinary artist who performs, makes videos and collages digital images. She embraces absurdity and takes deep pleasure in surfacing the disjuncture in language, sound and movement. Her recent works have been subjected to her “It’s Complicated” love and hate relationship with the Internet. More: lauraonsale.com

Riko Fluchel is a 23 year old graduate of Hampshire College, where he studied Queer FIlipin@ Studies, Creative Writing, and a dash of film/performance. His theoretical and artistic work explores temporality, postcolonialism, melancholy, feminist political philosophy, haunting, and all the pain and beauty of diasporic experience and identity. His goal is to one day become a community accountable scholar and artist. He currently lives in Oakland, CA.

ABOUT QUEER REBELS
Artists KB Boyce and Celeste Chan founded Queer Rebels in 2008. Their vision: to break down doors for queer artists of color, connect generations, and honor our histories with art for the future. Find out more about Queer Rebels: www.queerrebels.com and www.facebook.com/QRProductions

Thank you to the CA Arts Council for supporting this free public program!

Mission statement:
Artists KB Boyce and Celeste Chan founded Queer Rebels in 2008. Their vision: to break down doors for queer artists of color, connect generations, and honor our histories with art for the future. Find out more about Queer Rebels: www.queerrebels.com and www.facebook.com/QRProductions

ARTIST BIOS:

Star Amerasu has been a performer from the womb. This young, intelligent woman started out telling stories. Learning to read and write at just two years old, this child began her performing life, reading books aloud. Amerasu began singing as a child, in primary school choir. She went to a fine arts academy for high school, and later attended Cornish College of the Arts on a scholarship. She then left the school and landed in San Francisco. She has performed many different roles, crossing gender boundaries. Look forward to seeing more of her in the future.

Jeepneys: Anna Luisa Petrisko, also known as her musical and performance alias “Jeepneys,” uses science fiction in her work to broaden our imagination across literal and figurative borders and perform postcolonial critique. Jeepneys is named after the colorful and iconic public transportation vehicles that populate the Philippine islands, originating from discarded U.S. WWII army jeeps. In the spirit of that reinvention, Jeepneys uses Earthly materials to create other­worldy sounds + art, manifesting “electro Pinayism waves” that travel beyond our known borders. She is constantly traveling through space, seeking the wisdom of the cosmos, and exploring the infinite possibilities to heal through art and music.
Anna Luisa has exhibited at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) and MOMA PS1, and was one of the artists commissioned to perform for The Getty’s Pacific Standard Time Presents: LA Modern Architecture. She has toured the Unites States and Europe as a solo performer (Jeepneys) several times. She is also one half of the performance and installation duet, Mother Popcorn, along with artist Adee Roberson, and a member of an all women of color artist group, Black Salt Collective. She resides in Val Verde, CA, where she spends much of her time star-gazing and listening to the songs of the coyotes and owls.

Lambert Moss hails from New York City, where he drew inspiration from his time in musical theater and from some of the fiercest drag queens ever. He is now happy to call San Francisco his adopted home. In San Francisco he has performed at CounterPULSE in “Precious Drop” with the Jaara Dance Project and sung back up at The Rrazz Room for a wide range of acts including Justin Bond. You can see Lambert on select friday nights at “SOME THING” belting it out and making his drag mom David GLAMAMORE proud.

Laura Hyunjhee Kim is an interdisciplinary artist who performs, makes videos and collages digital images. She embraces absurdity and takes deep pleasure in surfacing the disjuncture in language, sound and movement. Her recent works have been subjected to her “It’s Complicated” love and hate relationship with the Internet. More: www.lauraonsale.com

KB Boyce is a Two-Spirit musician whose adventures have brought hir from teenage punk band appearances at CBGBs in NY, to B-grade horror movies in LA, and on to solo Drag King blues performance as TuffNStuff in San Francisco. KB pays Afropunk homage to African-American and Indigenous legacies of resistance through art.Celeste Chan is an Asian artivist and queer femme (you read that right). You can catch her new work in 2014 at CAAMFest (formerly known as SF Intl Asian American Film Festival), Queer Women of Color Film Festival, the San Francisco Public Library, and beyond! www.celestechan.com and www.queerrebels.com

Wild cards:

Naomi Fearn and Marc Seestaedt are two Berlin based freelance artists who in their off time take to the ukulele and obscure mini-synths to sing songs about the strange reasons people go into particle physics, the sexual proclivities of certain Russian leaders and doing naughty things to Helen Mirren look-alikes. More: naomifearn.blogspot.com

About The News’ Creator and Host:

Kolmel WithLove is the creator of The News. WithLove curates, builds cameras and costumes, collaborates with other artists, makes films, and performs. Their films have screened in a variety of settings including Frameline Film Festival, MIX Mexico, Seattle Center of Contemporary Art, RAID Projects and in the book and DVD project “Strange Attractors.”

WithLove has performed in venues including SOMArts Cultural Center, CounterPULSE, Highways Performance Space, The Velaslavasay Panorama Theatre, The Garage, various galleries, a few living rooms, two very nice leather bars, and a piano lounge.

ABOUT QUEER REBELS
Artists KB Boyce and Celeste Chan founded Queer Rebels in 2008. Their vision: to break down doors for queer artists of color, connect generations, and honor our histories with art for the future. Find out more about Queer Rebels: www.queerrebels.com and www.facebook.com/QRProductions